Wei Ligang

NEW YORK - Goedhuis Contemporary will launch a series of 15 solo artist shows devoted solely to the modernist and avant-garde practitioners of the New Chinese Ink Painting with a special show of works by Wei Ligang, (b. 1964 Datong City, Shanxi) at its New York gallery from September 25 – October 18.

It is difficult for us in the West to realize how much courage is required for a Chinese artist to in any way tamper with the hallowed calligraphic formulae evolved by past masters over the last 2000 years. Wei Ligang's paintings constitute no less than a new pictorial language in which his abstract characters allude to, but also have broken away from, the remorseless logic of tradition and emerge in beautiful, relaxed new structures of line and form.

While calligraphy has been the defining feature of Chinese culture, linked to music and dance and ranked alongside poetry as one of the highest forms of Chinese art, it also is a tremendously powerful vehicle for expression in these revolutionary times in China's political and social history. Wei Ligang goes so far to claim that the only completely Chinese art form today is abstract calligraphy, written on Chinese paper in Chinese ink. Although figurative images are occasionally discernable in his work, as are readable characters and indeed even gestures of recognition for admired Western artists like Brice Marden, these are not necessary for either a Western or Chinese audience to respond to the work.

Wei Ligang is among the leading artists engaged in a great aesthetic challenge to ensure that this most revered art form can develop so as to be relevant and meaningful not just to China, but throughout the world. He is particularly influential when stressing the importance of avant-garde calligraphy in retaining the clear distinction between it and Western art and even Chinese painting.

The emphatic Chinese-ness of Wei's work, which springs in part from his desire to resist the overwhelming influence of Western art, derives from his concern to evoke echoes of the past by de-constructing and re-configuring ancient scripts while still alluding to them through his brush-work and fluctuating densities of ink. Wei Ligang's objective is not to provide textural gratification but to stimulate the viewer to enjoy the magical transformation of a historical tradition with a continuous intellectual life of more than 3,500 years.

Wei Ligang has been at the forefront of modern ink painting's development and was one of the organizers of Bashu Parade '99 Chengdu Retrospective of Chinese Modern Calligraphy at the End of the 20th Century, widely regarded as the most important review of China's Modern Calligraphy Artistic Movement. His work was featured in the British Museum in the Calligraphy in Modern China exhibition in 2002 and he was awarded a fellowship by the Asian Cultural Council Hong Kong, an affiliate of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, that brought him to New York on a research trip in 2005 when his artistic dialogue with Brice Marden. His works are in the collections of both the British Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among many. He graduated from the advanced course at the Sha Menghai Calligraphy College in Ningbo and has taught mathematics and lectured around the world.

A selection of Wei Ligang's works will also be featured at Goedhuis Contemporary exhibitions in October at the Hong Kong International Arts & Antiques Fair, the International Art + Design Fair, and International Fine Art & Antique Dealers Show in New York, and at two Miami shows in December, Art Miami and artAsia.